Friday, 17 December 2010

I got a special delivery from Italy today, from Studio Blanco! They sent through the "Everyday Catalogue" which I participated in along with the press material used for the Control + C Festival. The catalogue is beautifully put together with stunning imagery from a range of extraordinary artists portraying their everyday lives. The images above are a few examples of what is inside, I have four images printed and they work really well in this format.

The print run is limited to 500 copies, but I think you can purchase a copy directly from Studio Blanco here http://www.studioblanco.it/

Thursday, 9 December 2010

The images above are photographs of the front and back of an exposed piece of photographic paper with traditional spotting inks on one side. The aqua blue, slightly discolouring around the edges is so intense, I couldn’t help but be drawn to it. I found these inks in a folder, which I think has been closed for some time now and felt such an overwhelming sense of nostalgia I had to document it.

The inks are for black and white prints and reminded me of the watercolours by Dirk Stewen. There is something so beautiful about the inks, they show a very hands on approach that is now fading away, losing those imperfect traces of a human touch.

“Winter may be creeping up on Turku, but Finland's former capital doesn't do seasonal gloom. Long nights just focus one of northern Europe's secret beauties on cosy daytime hangouts and heat-generating nightlife, while the city gets ready to step into the cultural spotlight as European Capital of Culture in 2011.” Norman Miller

I found this lovely article in the Guardian on Saturday the 27th about Turku, and its new found Capital of Culture status. It is a great little piece about the city, the former capital of Finland and talks about what to expect from this cold, beautifully creative city. Its well worth a read and even mentions Logomo and the year long exhibitions, one of which is “Alice in Wonderland.” I can’t wait to go!

Sunday, 5 December 2010

As Christmas draws closer and closer and we are reminded of how many shopping days we have left, I remembered these wonderful festive post cards that I brought two or three years ago now. What I love about these cards are the beautiful words written on the reverse, you are taken back to the early 1900's and get a glimpse into the lives once lived and share a tender moment between two people. In fact I often believe this is more interesting than the images on the front, but the top image is so lovely I had to share it with you all.

Friday, 3 December 2010

The artists have been released for the Capital of Culture Exhibition, "Alice in Wonderland." I am among some fantastic artists to name but a few, Christian Marclay, Elina Brotherus, Trish Morrisey, Zed Nelson and Laurel Nakadate. The exhibition opens on the 16th January for 12 months at Logomo in Turku, Finland. Visit The Finnish Museum of Photography's website for more information. I will keep you updated as and when I know more.

Thursday, 2 December 2010

With all this hype over the Snow, I remembered this perfect picture! It is taken from Martin Parr's wonderful book "Bad Weather" which was made in 1982 and fantastically documents in 54 black and white images examples of British weather. If you haven't yet seen this book, it is a must! You can find it on Martin's website and at Rocket Gallery, details below. Enjoy your Snow Day!

Wednesday, 1 December 2010

“Fresh hell - it’s damned good” is the title of the article written by Adrian Searle discussing the new show at the Palais de Tokyo in the Guardian on Monday 29th November. Here is a snippet below,

“There are lots of works here about the sort of emptiness that feels full and rich: Reinhard Mucha's shadowy cabinets; David Hammon's In the Hood, a hood ripped from a sport sweatshirt and hung head-high on the wall – there's no one in it. Michael Landy's Market, first seen in a London warehouse show at the beginning of the young British art boom in 1990, is empty, too – a sprawling arrangement of grocer's market stalls, with their stacked crates and stands covered in carpets of fake grass. Landy's vacant market could be a joke about minimalism, or seen as a forerunner of today's ultra-realistic installation art; it could be a metaphor for Thatcherism or for an art market where there's nothing to buy. Art, after all, can be nearly nothing. Fresh Hell is full of good things, forgotten things, old and new things. McEwen's enthusiasm and humour and curiosity is self-evident. Artists make good curators.”

The article is very interesting and well worth a read. For me personally, works that I found very enjoyable were the video pieces by Gino de Dominicis, where he’s repeatedly trying to fly, Nate Lowmann’s dirt series and Michaelangelo Pistoletto’s “The Ears of Jasper Johns, 1966” pictured above.

Friday, 26 November 2010

“Rachel Monique”, is the Sophie Calle installation at the Palais de Tokyo which I managed to see in Paris last week. The show sadly closes tomorrow, the 27th November, so if you haven’t seen it, I hope this can explain what you missed.

There are few shows in this world that really move you, or have the ability to deeply affect you, but Sophie Calle’s was one of them for me. I can honestly say it must be one of, if not the best show I have ever seen. Even as I write this now, recalling what I saw and experienced, something changes in me, physically and emotionally. I am still so touched by the tenderness, the honesty and poignant reminders of grief brought about by this exhibit.

The installation is about the death of Calle’s mother, and brings together a collection of video, old family photographs, new imagery and objects to the lower ground, unused part of the Palais de Tokyo. The broken concert floors, the unfinished walls only enhance your experience as you wonder through a memorial for a woman you never knew. What is immediately apparent is stillness, a silence that one rarely witnesses in a gallery anymore. This is certainly achieved through the strict entrance limit of 30 people, but its more than just that. There is a real sense of respect paid to the works, as if you are walking through a grave, or a witness to her funeral.

Behind tall, metal fences you see black and white photographs, shipping containers marked with Calle’s name and destinations of places the works, or some have been exhibited. Mixed with these are vases of flowers, notably white lily’s, the flower for death placed carefully in front of an image or in the middle of the concert floor. Each flower is fresh, reminding us of her grief and what has recently passed.

One video work in particular moved me so deeply, tears streamed down my cheeks. We see two different views, to the left Calle’s dying mother being tendered to and to the right a floating iceberg in the North Pole. As you watch the two films unfold, you witness the moment of death juxtaposed to the cold yet calming swirl of the iceberg in the sea. Having recently lost someone very dear to me and seen him in his casket, the coldness was very familiar. What was so beautiful about this piece was the honesty, the rawness of the action, but produced with such dignity. I could of watched that film for hours, over and over again.

I could go on and on about the installation, but I feel this helps to explain a little of what the exhibits achieved. It proved to me that you can produce a body of work, solely on death, a death close to you which not only creates something beautiful and inspiring, but something that brings light back into a dark place.

Sunday, 21 November 2010

Here are some installation shots of my work in Paris Photo in booths A37 - Flowers Gallery and D4 - Foam Magazine. The works exhibited in Flowers were four Polaroid Portraits from the series Monochromes and Colourations and the response has been very positive. The fair itself was very good, a varied selection of vintage and contemporary with some excellent pieces. I will write more about this in another post later in the week, along with a post about the extraordinary exhibitions, "Sophie Calle - Rachel Monique" and "Fresh Hell" at the Palais de Tokyo.

Wednesday, 17 November 2010

I am leaving for Paris tomorrow morning, so I am just putting the finishing touches together for my trip to Paris Photo! If you are heading over, you can see a selection of my work in both publication and exhibition form. The yellow dots represent the booths to look out for; D4 for Foam Magazine and A37 for Flowers Gallery, London. I will also be at Off Print for the launch evening, so hope to meet you there!

Monday, 8 November 2010

I am one of the artists participating in the new catalogue from Studio Blanco running parallel to the festival Ctrl + C in Capri. My images are also used for all the PR/ Communication for the project, which I am very excited about. The book is based upon a "nonexistent Exhibition" with the theme "Everyday,” and has some great names taking part, from Richard Kern, Nadav Kander to Kim Gordon. Here is an introduction to the book,

"One by one, scroll through the days. Some long, seemingly endless. Others slip away, as if we had not even met them. Some remain in our memories forever. Others are repeated in a cycle of almost becoming bored. Show some love and serenity. More a blanket of darkness and torment. Some happen and it is as if they had not. Others are turning points. Some keep their promises. Others see them breaking. Some are eagerly awaited. Others do not have expectations.”

In the days that opposites coexist. The essence of our being contradictory.

Saturday, 6 November 2010

So, as it is now November, The Capital of Culture Exhibitions, taking place in Turku, Finland 2011 are fast approaching, and I am busy preparing the works. The exhibition that I am participating in is called "Alice in Wonderland" produced by The Finnish Museum of Photography and curated by art historians Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger, Elina Heikka and chief editor, curator Sheyi Bankale (UK.)

I have finalised the framing specification and above is an example of what they will look like, a wonderful warm walnut wooden frame. I am very excited as I have just booked my flights to Helsinki for January, I have been forewarned that it is going to get very cold, with averaging temperatures of -6 degrees! I will be updating you on all things Turku 2011 as and when I know more.

Wednesday, 3 November 2010

I am just off to see one of my favourite photographers at The Whitechapel, Walid Raad. I'll post later today to talk about the exhibition, until then....

What an exhibition! The Whitechapel have exceeded and surpassed all that I had hoped for in this show, as they curated over a decade of Raad's work in a beautiful, informative manner. The show brings together works that I have previously seen, notably the Deutsche Borse prize winning "We decided to let them say, 'we are convinced' twice." donated to theAtlas Group to ones like "Let's be honest, the weather helped". This one I found particularly beautiful as the pieces show 1970's buildings in Beirut that have been repeatedly shot at with varying degrees of force and differing military. Each image has been put into what appears to be a notebook and all the bullet holes have been highlighted with different coloured stickers. The width of the stickers is the exact diameter of the bullets fired at the subject, they also show the different countries armies. The images are striking both educationally and visually.

Other series that I found very inspirational were, "Oh God,' he said, talking to a tree" and "Secrets in the open sea" which consists of twenty-nine photographic prints that were found buried under rubble in the commercial districts of Beirut in the 1993 demolition. What you are presented with are six large prints in varying shades of blue, with a tiny picture in black and white in the bottom right hand corner. It is said that these prints were found and sent to a laboratory that then discovered the portrait images underneath. Whether this is fact or fiction, the outcome is truly outstanding. This body of work has given me much to think about and is great research material for my new work.

In fact this exhibition has been a breath of fresh air, it has to be one of the best shows I have seen in a very long time, thank you Walid Raad!

Images copyright Walid Raad, (Exhibition shot taken from the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin.)

Dirk Stewen's show is currently on at Maureen Paley and is a wonderful exhibition, his first in the UK, which puts together works on paper that present his artistic strategy. The works use different sources of imagery, all that have been collected in his studio in Hamburg. From photocopies, inkjets to Indian ink dyed photographic sheets all works, as the press release states "represent his basic principle: to keep his work in a constant state of becoming."

The works are delicate. Carefully sewn pieces of confetti, mixed with larger pieces and other objects are thread together over photographic sheets, some dyed repeatedly so that layers of black ink create new patterns on the surface of the paper. For me, like the black sea or a night sky with lights floating up into space. The watercolours are stunning, mixed with what appears to be torn paper, the inks merge into one creating what seems to reference developing organic matter. The pieces for me act as almost an escape, a brief glance into another time, a new place of calm.

This exhibition has been deeply inspiring and I will shortly be creating some new works, taking onboard what Stewen has achieved here. The show is on until 14th November see more here;

Thursday, 21 October 2010

While I was at the Tate Britain I decided to go and see Rachel Whiteread’s new exhibition and was completely blown away by her stunning drawings. The Tate explains the show as offering us,

“….a rare opportunity to explore her works on paper, most of which have never been shown before in a public gallery.

These collages and drawings provide a fascinating and intimate insight into the creative process behind Whiteread's work. While her sculptures are often large-scale and involve a team of fabricators, these paper works provide a more personal, mobile counterpoint. Nevertheless, they also share many of the themes familiar from her public commissions: texture and surface; void and presence; and the subtle observation of human traces in everyday life.”

There is such tenderness in her craftsmanship, they are thoughtful, sensitive and beautifully painted. I found the postcard series very inspiring and useful to me for research into new works that I am thinking about.

The images above and below are ones I found particularly inspiring and I suggest anyone to go and see this wonderful exhibition.

I have been enjoying a very cultural weekend, Saturday at Frieze Art Fair then off to the Tates today! I have been meaning to visit the Tate Britain to see the Muybridge exhibition for a while now so decided that I should do both, as I wanted to see the new Turbine installation at the Tate Modern.

The above pictures are of the new Unilever series by artist Ai Weiwei, called Sunflower Seeds 2010. This installation is beautiful, every sunflower seed is hand made of porcelain and there are 100 million in the turbine hall, every seed apparently identical is in fact a unique piece in its own right, bringing questions about China's economy and the geo-politics that surround the country. It is a stunning piece, a must see!

And now it's closed! Having missed the last couple of years, this year I managed to get to Frieze twice, once for the private view and once more on Saturday. All I can say as it is incredibly overwhelming, inspiring and rather hectic, all in all, the standard experience of an Art Fair.

I was very pleased to see such a wonderful spread of Photography, so many great galleries exhibiting it in all its forms. From Gursky's to Demand's, Tillmans' to Pascual's every corner you turn another photographic form. It is hard to recall all the great works that I saw and the galleires that exhibited them, but a must mention is Matthew Marks, Maureen Paley, Taka Ishii Gallery and Casey Kaplan.

There was some truly brilliant drawings by Francis Alys at David Zwirner, some stunning Peter Fischli & David Weiss black and white sculptural photographs at Matthew Marks and at Zero, a collection of red moleskin diaries opened and framed, simple yet effective. Above and below are a few snaps I took of the works.

All rights of work are reserved to the artists mentioned above, Francis Alys, Fischli Weiss, Marlo Pascual and Zero Gallery

Wednesday, 13 October 2010

My series "The Photograph as Contemporary Art" has been featured on this wonderful German Blog iGNANT, a top spot for contemporary art, photography and design. It is well worth a look, http://www.ignant.de/

Thursday, 30 September 2010

Indigo & Cloth, in association with Foam magazine and Paulaner beer, would like to invite you and a guest to celebrate 3 years in business, 200 years of Oktoberfest and the New Issue, 24 TALENT! I am loving all these launches.

Thursday, 23 September 2010

A beautiful quote here from Alec Soth, talking about the subconscious canonisation of imagery, great piece of evidence that links back to my concept behind The Photograph as Contemporary Art series.

“My head is filled with nuanced cliches – I might subconsciously be influenced by William Egglestone – but she doesn't have that framework. Of course, as a professional, you can't go back to a time when you had none, but you can try. Myself, I long for that quality again." Alec Soth

Wednesday, 22 September 2010

These photos where taken last Saturday, 18th September at Breda Photo in The Netherlands. Foam Magazine launched their new “Talent” issue and Marcel Feil, curator at Foam_Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam, introduced the talents of 2010 in a presentation, and my work was selected!

Unfortunately I did not manage to get to Breda Photo for the launch, but was very kindly supplied with the following two photographs of the presentation above by photographer Morad Bouchakour who was there. Thank you very much Morad!

Friday, 17 September 2010

I am heading down to The Photographers' Gallery tomorrow for their Build-Up, Outdoor Collage party to make a new photomontage! This event is free for all and there is no need to book places, just bring along your photographs and grab a prit stick, however it is weather dependent, so fingers crossed! Keep a look out for my new piece, that will be blogged tomorrow.........

An update. I did indeed go down to the Collage party yesterday, but found myself unable to do any new work. What would of made sense, was if I had a child in tow, the event was definitely more for families. But I did buy a nice new book about London architecture which will be turned into collages at a later date!

The aim of the Save the Arts campaign is to encourage people to sign a petition that will be sent to the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt. It points out that it has taken 50 years to create a vibrant arts culture in Britain that is the envy of the world and appeals to the government not to slash arts funding and risk destroying this long-term achievement and the social and economic benefits it brings to all.

The Eadweard Muybridge exhibition at the Tate Britain opened this week and closes on the 16th January 2011. I haven't yet visited the show, but I am planning to go next week, I just couldn't miss a show like this!

The exhibition displays many works of art with a particular interest on how he created and honed these remarkable images; it shows us how important Muybridge was to photography but also to the visual world. What the exhibition also provides is evidence of very early photographic manipulation and in a recent article it was described that, "Maybridge saw himself as an artist photographer and that meant getting the best possible image," said Warrell. "It didn't matter if it wasn't true. He saw himself as following on in the British and western tradition of landscape, he was doing the photographic equivalent." Mark Brown for the Guardian.

Image taken from Tate Britain website, copyright Eadweard Muybridge. Text from article published on 6th September 2010 for the Guardian.

Wednesday, 1 September 2010

“Corinne opened the door for a whole generation of photographers, designers, models and stylists who suddenly saw that the fashion industry didn’t have to be this exclusive club for the privileged and perfect. Suddenly there was another way, a place where ‘normal’ people were welcome.” Belinda White for the Telegraph.

Friday, 27 August 2010

The above piece, titled "Pola Negria" 2010 is currently on show at the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris. It is part of a new show by Jack Pierson which opened on the 6th July and closes on the 6th September.

This piece above is beautiful and the show presents a collection of new sculptures, drawings and photographs that have been described as a "show in which his works resonate thematically, conceptually and formally, establishing a contemplative, highly wistful meditation on work, creation and the perils of time." Zoe Stillpass for Frieze Magazine.

I came across this article today, and it is a must read! The piece is written by Michael Grieve on the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests and can be found online at the Foto8 Blog.

The text is powerful, compelling and quite shocking, as Grieve describes his experience of photographing at the protests and taking part in the IPCC Investigation into the tragic death of Mr Tomlinson. Below is a quote that shows just how important photography is, but how little it is understood.

"But photography did not fail that day. It recorded evidence as best it could from professionals, amateurs, to the unauthored CCTV. All photographers acted with total professionalism, doing their job, and not, as the police may these days accuse us, acting like potential terrorists or paedophiles, or whatever they decide to pull out of the hat." Michael Grieve

Exciting News! I have been selected as 1 of the 15 artists by Foam Magazine for this years Talent issue, out on the 9th September 2010. Check out the link here, and keep an key out on Foam's website for details, http://www.foammagazine.nl/talent

Saturday, 7 August 2010

Here are some new montages that I have completed, titled left to right, "Photomontage XXVIII", "Photomontage XXIV" and "Photomontage XXVII". So far there are 27 photomontages in the series and counting!

Henri Matisee

"By creating these coloured paper cut-outs, it seems to me that I am happily anticipating things to come. I don't think I have ever found such balance as I have in creating these paper cut-outs. But I know that it will only be much later that people realise to what extent the work I am doing today is in step with the future."

HenriMatisse.

Alexander Rodchenko

“Photography has broken free from being secondary and imitating the techniques of etching, painting or carpet-making. Having found its own way it is blossoming and fresh breezes bring a scent that is particular only to photography. New possibilities lie ahead.”

Alexander Rodchenko, for the Soviertskoye foto, 31st October 1934.

Carter Mull

“It is the artist’s job to stay ahead of the curve, producing complex and nuanced worked that advance discourse. And it is the critic’s job to see the contained, not the container, and to produce a more accurate and generative framework for understanding the diversity and complexity of contemporary photographic practices.”

Carter Mull, notes in reponse to "foRm" by Kevin Moore.

Set the Tigers Free

“Farewell to my only friend

You've been so good to me

Now the carnival has ended

Let's set the tigers free”

Lyrics by Villagers

Erik Kessels

“Spanning many years, this epic tale of determination leaves a rousing message: be true to yourself and your dreams and one day, you shall succeed. Even if success means merely taking a decent picture of your best friend.”

Erik Kessels

Jorge Luis Borges

“ a vast methodical fragment of an unknown planet’s entire history, with its architecture and its playing cards, with the dread of its mythologies and the murmur of its languages.”

Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius – Jorge Luis Borges

Jennifer Higgie

“To live,’ wrote Pessoa in his posthumously published The Book of Disquiet (1982), ‘is to be someone else.’ Oscar Wilde’s famous dictum is also apt here: ‘Man’, he wrote, ‘is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

Jennifer Higgie, Frieze Editors Blog about Krakow Photomonth.

Light

“ To look up and look out is to look back in time.”

Professor Brian Cox

Here on

“We have an internet full of inspiration: The profound, the beautiful, the disturbing, the ridiculous, the trivial, the vernacular and the intimate. We have next-to-nothing cameras that record the lightest light, the darkest dark. This technological potential has creative consequences. It changes our sense of what it means to make. It results in work that feels like play, work that turns old into new elevates the banal...."

Taken from an article about Erik Kessel by Louise Clements in 1000 Words Photography magazine.

Look After Me

"Look after me and I will look after you

That’s something we both forgot to do

I find it hard to see your face,

Cannot remember it well enough, only the details such, then I see it in my head,

When I am with you its familiar and beautiful, and?

As night comes in I know it better, seeing it clear again."

Lyrics by Hot Chip

Tim Hetherington

“If you are interested in mass communication, then you have to stop thinking of yourself as a photographer. We live in a post-photographic world. If you are interested in photography, then you are interested in something — in terms of mass communication — that is past. I am interested in reaching as many people as possible.”

Tim Hetherington (very sadly died on 20th April 2011)

John Stezaker

"I am the servant of my practice, it's an adventure."

John Stezaker, Whitechapel Talk 03/03/2011

Jorge Luis Borges

“ with its emperors ad its seas, with its minerals and its birds and its fish, with its algebra and its fire, with its theological and metaphysical controversy.”

Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius – Jorge Luis Borges

Charlotte Cotton

"Sometimes when I get overexcited about this dematerialized moment, I think, 'Could you consider photography as a way of thinking?"

Charlotte Cotton, from a conversation with Aaron Schuman in What’s Next

Oscar Wilde

“The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Gabriel Orozco

“I like the idea of the photograph as a shoe box in which you keep and transport objects or memorable events in your life.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Samuel Beckett

John Stezaker

"I love that moment of discovery, when something appears out of the ground of its disappearance; the anonymous space of circulation, where images remain unseen and overlooked."

John Stezaker

Dale Carnegie

“If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.”

Dale Carnegie (1888-1955)

David Campbell

“And beyond the considered post, there is a need for even slower forms of communication like the research report, the documentary story and even (god forbid!) the academic monograph. These “old media” (a problematic concept, but more on that later) are essential because “new media” (an equally problematic concept) depend upon them for the material they re-mediate and circulate.”

David Campbell, from Twitter test article, 13th May 2009

Bruce Nauman

"The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths."

Wrote Bruce Nauman, in a 1967 neon sign.

Cold War

“I know a way out!

If you catch my drift

"Hold it close to your heart

Let’s just breathe

So just count it off

The worst is over

At worst we standstill

Through the night”

Lyrics by The Morning Benders

Easy/Lucky/Free

“Sometimes I worry that I've lost the plot, My twitching muscles tease my flippant thoughts, I never really dreamed of heaven much, Until we put him in the ground”

Lyrics by Bright Eyes

Wolfgang Tillmans

“With tricky subject matter, there is always a delicacy and often an idiosyncrasy to Wolfgang’s eye that belongs only to him.”

Paul Flynn, pg 95, 11th issue, Fantastic Man, 2010.

Albert Einstein

“All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Independence Day

“Everybody knows, Everybody knows, Everybody knows, You only live a day

But it's brilliant anyway.”

Lyrics by Elliot Smith

William Ewing

“No one ever imagined that Polaroid would go bankrupt,” William Ewing, director of Lausanne’s Musée de l’Elysée,“It’s like imagining Apple [computers] not being with us in 2025.”

William Ewing interviewed by Simon Bradley in Lausanne, swissinfo.ch

William S. Burroughs

“Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.”

William S. Burroughs

Walter Benjamin

“The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.”

Walter Benjamin

Jean-Luc Godard

“The truth is that there is no terror untempered by some great moral idea.”

Jean-Luc Godard

Tod Papageorge

“……ontologically, a photograph is a unique kind of picture, but a picture nonetheless, one that has radically transformed the piece of the world it describes, whether for artistic or journalistic or any other ends, but (obviously) has not transported it out of its picture-state into some nebulous truth-state.”

Tod Papageorge and the ‘truth’ of photography, January 8th 2010

Hopper

"There are moments that I've had some real brilliance, you know, but I think they are moments. And sometimes, in a career, moments are enough."

Dennis Hooper died 29th May 2010.

Mary Frye

“Miss me - but let me go

When I come to the end of the road

And the sun has set for me

I want no rites in a gloom-filled room.

Why cry for a soul set free?

Miss me a little--but not too long

And not with your head bowed low.

Remember the love that we once shared

Miss me--but let me go……”

Mary Frye (Proposed authorship as it is contested)

Nietzsche

“The reasons for which 'this' world has been characterized as 'apparent' are the very reasons which indicate its reality; any other kind of reality is absolutely indemonstrable.”

René Magritte

"My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question 'What does that mean'? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable."

René Magritte

Nietzsche

“Why does man not see things? He is himself standing in the way: he conceals things.”

Salvador Dali

Anthony Giddens

“Modernity radically alters the nature of day-to-day social life and affects the most personal aspects of our experience.”

Anthony Giddens, Introduction, “Modernity and Self Identity”, 1991.

Tarkovsky

“Now here we are, enjoying this part of his work. Images like clouds of butterflies around the eyes of someone who felt the brevity of life, a perception unconnected with his illness, which as yet lay in the future, but linked to his awareness that everything is made up of fleeting glances, to be kept close at hand for a journey that sometimes get rough.”

Gerhard Richter

“You realise that you can’t represent reality at all- that what you make represents nothing but itself, and therefore is itself reality.”

Gerhard Richter, Exert taken from the Exhibition catalogue from “Gerhard Richter Portraits” at National Portrait Gallery, 2009.

Instant Light

“An artistic image

is one that ensures its own development

its historical viability.

An image is a grain,

A self-evolving retroactive organism.

It is a symbol of the actual life,

As opposed to life itself.

Life contains death.

An image of life, by contrast,

Excludes it, or else sees in it

A unique potential

For the affirmation of life.”

Pg 56, “Instant Light, Tarkovsky Polaroids”, 2004.

Martin Heidegger

“Art becomes a nostalgia for a potential experience, for what we might have had and might have experienced.”

Martin Heidegger, quote taken from an interview with John Stezaker.

Paul Valéry - Pieces sur l'art

“In all arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power……We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts…..”

Paul Valéry, ‘La Conquéte de l’abiquité,’ Paris. Taken from Pg. 211 “The Work of Art in the Age of mechanical reproduction.” Illuminations, Walter Benjamin, 1968.

Hold Everything Dear - for John Berger

“as the leaves of the hedge store the light

that the moment thought it had lost

as the nest of her wrists beats like the chest of a wren in the turning air

as the chorus of the earth find their eye in the sky

and unwrap them to each other in the teeming dark

hold everything dear”

Gareth Evans, 19th May 2005, taken from “Hold everything dear; Dispatches on survival and resistance” by John Berger” 2007.

Edwin H. Land

"Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible"